Location: At my desk, fully clothed

You tell me what is stranger. In a virtual world where 75% of the population walks around in underwear, American Apparel failed.  Yet in the real world, the CEO of that company walks around at work in his underwear and get slapped with a sexual harassment suit.

I thought it an urban legend too good to be true when I first encountered this story.  But then a bit of Googling turned this up, by Carla Hall, from the LA Times’ Web Site:

Dov Charney, founder and chief executive of casual fashion giant American Apparel, acknowledges that he has appeared in his underwear many times in front of male and female employees.

And yes, on a few occasions during work meetings, he donned a skimpy garment that barely covered his genitals.

But those events, he said, have to be understood in the context of the fashion industry.

I don’t understand. Oh silly me.

As readers may not know, American Apparel was one of the first corporations to create a presence in Second Life. Anti-corporate crusaders attacked the virtual store a few times, creating a ruckus.  Then after not making enough money, the company pulled up their virtual stakes in SL (and have decamped for MTV’s Virtual Lower East Side).

The surrealism of Charney in the role of Captain Underpants exceeds most things I’ve seen in-world at SL.  And once again, a real-world, multimillion-dollar company’s lack of vision seems odd.  After all, a man who parades into the board room in his whitey-tighties is not thinking inside any box I know.  He’d be the perfect leader, one would assume, to design JUST the unmentionables that the jaded SLer needs to keep in that virtual closet.

SL’s entire fashion industry is predicated on showing more skin the folks would on this side of the screen! Help me out here, Fashionista Tenchi Morigi (shown in a UR Spiders virtual shirt).  True, isn’t it? 

Yet American Apparel was incapable of designing items that would look good on 8’ tall green humanoids with four arms or 2’ tall pink cuddly-bunnies.  Or Pappy Enoch.

They need nether garments too!

I think we shareholders need to DEMAND that overpaid CEOs who invest in SL meet their boards of directors while wearing undies.  It might not make for better decisions about investments in-world but it might lead to shorter meetings.

And if the stock markets continue to tumble, we may all be left in our underpants in this world.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Hmmmm. I don´t really think so. True there is more then a hand full of designers specialized in daring designs or the so called slutwear but I think SL maintains a healthy mix of styles like you will encounter in the meatspace. Additionally the fact that specific clothing is requested for different groups of interest makes it even more colorful then RL.

I think the fact that a majority of avatars seems to like more daring clothes and those shops being hugely frequented and set up at popular places tweaks the “reality” a bit here.

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